Venice

Leaving the ship- May 11,2009

The disembarkation procedure is tedious, but effective. We were given colored bag tags and told to put them on our bags and have the bags out by 1 am the day of departure. (Do I need to mention that N and I had them outside way before that?) After breakfast, passengers are organized by bag tag colors and told to wait in a specific area. Then we just wait til called. I think there were about 10 colors ranging from departure time of 9:00 to 11:15 or so. Glad we were in the third group to leave.

We left bags in a safe area arranged by Collette tours and got on board boats taking us to "downtown" Venice. First stop after landing was a demonstration at a famous glass factory. We watched an artisan blow a vase and then fashion a horse. Then we were shown how durable the glass is and got a speech about the colors added to the glass. We were given time to shop. The merchandise was breathtakingly beautiful, but the the prices also took away my breath. One benefit, they ship free, so a person wouldn't have to carry the glass items on the airplane.



After the glass factory/ showroom, we had a "walking tour" with a local guide named, Antonella, explaining all about St. Mark's Square.
A few tidbits about what we learned---
*Napoleon destroyed a church to create a dance hall. That building is now a museum. No statues of Napoleon in Venice.
*We saw a clock tower that works on light/sun. It tells the hour and time digitally (not a clock face)
*Venice is made up of 118 small islands with 400 bridges. there are 200 canals, but not really, only 3 are actually called canals,
the smaller ones are called rivers.
*Only about 300 gondolas exist on the rivers and canals and by the Doge's decree in the 1500's all are black and the same
shape.




* The population of the city is shrinking because of the problems inhabitants have just getting around, costs of living in the
city and the constant threat of flood waters.
The device/ headsets Antonella used for the tour made it much easier to hear her than if she was yelling over all the other groups. She did mention that it was good that we were there at that time, because it can become very crowded. To us it was already "super" crowded. Depends on your perspective I suppose.

Almost every shop contains "Masks" and we were told that this is one of the first places where Carnivale/ Mardi Gras was celebrated and it is still a major event today.

We had some time on our own and Nick went looking for a bathroom (of course) and he found one in a hole in the wall MacDonalds that stunk of sewer. I'm sure he'll tell you all about it later. We had lunch (sandwiches) in a little shop w/ not many places to sit. Then we had some ice cream. Twice daily ice cream will have to become a thing of the past, very soon.
We took pictures, walked and shopped and then met our group at the appointed time. We caught another boat and were delivered to the area where our bags were waiting. After another bathroom break, we climbed aboard the bus for a 4 hour drive to Milan and our hotel for the night.

Tour guide, Daniel, gave everyone some quiet time to sleep, and then showed us the governmental type of speed controls on coaches and trucks. Just below and attached to the speedometer is a paper disc on which is graphed the speed of the vehicle for the past 24 hours. It shows stop and go city traffic by little short close marks, highway driving is shown differently and breaks are shown as a flat line. All bus and truck drivers' records can be proved to be good/bad by the use of these items. This was begun in 1975 and the technology is moving toward using cd's rather than paper discs. These are not used on private cars or trucks. This was brought to the U.S years ago, but use was discontinued because it was thought to be too "invasive". Drivers can be fined today for speeding last week. The records are kept for a very long time.

Earlier we learned about Italian toll roads --if a driver were to go from the top to the bottom of Italy, he would spend over 100 Eruo ($.75 Euro to a U.S. dollar.) And I thought Oklahoma had high tolls.


The hotel were we are spending our last night of the trip is Ultra modern and YES! wifi internet is available. Not free, but not as expensive as the cruise ship, either.

Tomorrow will be a long day. See ya'